


Ghost of Perfume

by Missy



Category: 20th Century CE RPF, Kennedy Family RPF
Genre: Consolation, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Infidelity, Romance, Self-Rationalization, Yuletide Madness, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 16:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16538054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Jacqueline likes Robert for one reason: he doesn't ask questions.





	Ghost of Perfume

**Author's Note:**

  * For [warriorpoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/gifts).



Jackie loves Bobby for one reason; he doesn’t ask her questions. 

Everyone else has questions for her. What she’s going to do in the future? Where she’s going to go? Will she work? Will she raise the children in Massachusetts or New York? 

She likes Bobby because the questions go silent whenever she’s around him. She doesn’t have to act like everything’s okay when the world’s really falling apart, and he’s nice about that.

He understands. 

He’s comforting and exciting; familiar and unfamiliar. There is a note of Jack to him like roses in the base-note of a perfume sample, but he’s overwhelmingly himself; in holding him she’s not just replacing a brother for a brother, gliding along on misfortune and drama without looking over her shoulder. She tries not to think about what his wife must be thinking, when he cups her chin and pulls her close. Does Ethel smell Jackie’s perfume, floral and crisp, on Bobby’s collar too often? Does she regret what she’s chosen, and wishes she could pay for her own bit of silence, far from the ghosts hanging out in the back of her mind? Jackie knows. She thinks about the too-numerous-to-count times she smelled another woman’s perfume on her own husband’s collar, but they don’t dampen her love for Jack.

But Jackie knows she can’t help herself. She looks at Bobby and she sees understanding. She knows the depth of the heartbreak he’s lived – from Kit to Jack and back again. He may not have been the one to live with the feeling of blood-soaked fabric going stiff and cold under his fingertips, but he’s seen things she can fathom but never understand at a chemical level. War death. The pain of dealing with a horrible choice and a sister who will never be the woman she was. But he never, ever leaves her side. 

She doubts he will. No matter what might come between them.


End file.
